Religious and American

The 30 million U.S. Roman Catholics make up only 8% of the world's Catholic population, but they are the free-currency mainstay of the Vatican's finances; they also provide nearly 20% of the world membership in Catholic religious communities. Last week, on the lakeside campus of the University of Notre Dame, at South Bend, Ind., 1,978 superiors and other officials of religious orders in the U.S. gathered for four days in the largest congress of religious orders in the church's history. They represented a total of 157,000 nuns, 44,000 priests and 8,000 lay brothers.

The Pope's personal representative, Monsignor Arcadio Larraona, Secretary of the Vatican's Congregation of Religious, set the tone: "Our gathering is a congress which is both genuinely religious and typically American." The overtones of the convention were simon-pure American, down to name badges for the delegates, a humorously written guide book, and a meeting place in a vast, Quonset-type building draped with U.S. flags and the Notre Dame college colors. Although there was no doubting the basic orthodoxy of the delegates' theology, some of the sentiments expressed would have sounded odd in conservative quarters of the Vatican, and downright heretical in Cardinal Segura's Seville (see below).

A Democratic Manner. All the delegates were concerned with the problems of "religious obedience," i.e., how to adapt centuries-old monastic rules to the practical governance of modern young Americans. Said Villanova College's Father Robert E. Regan, O.S.A.: "We are, in a rather deep and distinctive fashion, a freedom-loving and liberty-loving people . . . The average young man candidate for the religious life . . . has been raised in a climate of independence--political, civil and, to a rather large degree, domestic . . . Is it asking too much that American religious superiors, out of deference to the American temperament, approach the matter of the exercise of their authority in a kind of democratic manner?"

There were arguments pro & con over who helps the church more--the active priest or the contemplative. Said the Right Rev. M. James Fox, Abbot of the Trappist monastery of Our Lady of Gethsemani, in Kentucky,* whose monks take a vow never to speak, "Silence does not lock the soul in a prison . . . Silence merely gives you a heart filled with Jesus." Countered Dom Aelred Graham, a Benedictine who writes and teaches, "It is possible to do more good and lose nothing of contemplation by creative and more active work for society."

Modern Comforts. Other topics on the agenda: whether religious should use sleeping cars or sit-up coach seats for long rail trips, whether novices in religious houses should be allowed to look at the outer world on television. Before one of the sisters' discussion sessions, it was discovered that a priest was to address them on the subject of modern comforts and conveniences. Up rose a seven-member nuns' committee to protest. Said Mother Mary Gerald, O.P., "Why should any man tell us about our comforts and conveniences?" Four nuns were hastily scheduled to speak in the priest's place.

Late Tuesday evening, in token of their unity, more than 2,000 delegates and clerical visitors marched slowly, four abreast, bearing candles to the grotto of the Blessed Virgin on the campus. There they chanted the rosary and the litanies of the church to bring the conference to a prayerful end. Said Father Larraona, pleased, "I return to the Vatican with a warm sense of gratitude. I will have many fine things to tell the Holy Father."

* Most famed resident (and most garrulous--in print): Thomas Merton (author of Seven Storey Mountain, etc.)

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.